


Heareth the Marinere

by catalysticskies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Horrorterrors - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalysticskies/pseuds/catalysticskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Look down beneath the wave-worn bark<br/>Into the cold depth of the sea!</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heareth the Marinere

It comes out of nowhere, starting as a light breeze across the empty sea, the sky a clear, crisp blue as you sit on the deck and check your nets for gaps and tears, finding yourself boxed in by dark clouds and rolling waves half an hour later, struggling to throw as much into the cabin as you can before you lose it. You've been in storms before, but usually you have a little more warning. Once you're safely situated below the creaking deck of your poor excuse of a boat, there's nothing to do but wait it out and hope you don't turn into one of those sob-story sailor movies.

The chances of that happening increase dramatically over the next hour, churning your stomach even with you hard earned experience as the ship rocks almost to ninety degrees at times. Rain buckets down across the wood and the ocean roars in your ears and you know this is worse than anything you've fought before. You're forced to go up to the cabin, for sake of not getting crushed by the various crap below deck that's broken through its bindings in the turmoil.

You're not sure when it happens, but you find yourself lying on the side of the cabin, your back pressed to the wall-turned-floor as you throw a silent prayer that whoever reports your death is one of the hot news anchors and not the old guy, and you're upside down, rolling through air and crashing against something hard -no, the surface breaks after a split second and engulfs you, slick and cold and dark. You push your way out of the cabin, surfacing for a gasp of breath in the air that's ninety percent water and ten percent fuck off.

You turn to find your boat almost entirely upside down - _you paid a fucking fortune for that piece of shit_ \- before another wave rolls over you, sending you back under to struggle like a cat with Downs syndrome back up. You see a dark shape fly through the air a good few hundred feet away, something roaring in your ears (probably all the water that's now lodged in your skull) as you gasp for air and try to stay afloat.

You're almost knocked unconscious as another wave crashes down over you, leaving you dazed and probably concussed, but luckily you remember to hold your breath as you try to find _up_. You almost break the surface before you're down, _not done with you yet motherfucker_ , your lungs burning and blood rushing in your ears and you think there might be vomit somewhere below the fire in your chest.

You can't keep it in. Your breath escaped you in bubbles, water taking its place in your windpipe as you instinctively breathe back in. Something cold slaps against your leg, and you swear to god if you're getting slapped around by fucking _fish_ you are so done with the ocean forever, something cold and solid wrapping around your arm as you try to work through the panicked fuzz. All you know at that point is that someone is singing, a gentle, far-off voice that reminds you of lilacs and lilies and waterfalls and the musky smell of the forest.

_It is not better here to be,_

_Than to be toiling late and soon?_

_In the dreary night to see_

_Nothing but the blood-red moon_

_Go up and down into the sea;_

_Or, in the loneliness of day,_

_To see the still seals only_

_Solemnly lift their faces gray,_

_Making it yet more lonely?_

_Is it not better than to hear_

_Only the sliding of the wave_

_Beneath the plank, and feel so near_

_A cold and lonely grave,_

_A restless grave, where thou shalt lie_

_Even in death unquietly?_

The sun is hot on your skin, the familiar up-and-down of the gentle sea bobbing you along as you wake. Your throat burns, something hitched very firmly in your windpipe like a serious case of phlegm, your eyes watering as the sticky lids flutter open. You're lying on your back, everything above you empty and bright and brilliant blue. The water sloshes quietly against the side of... whatever you're lying on.

You roll over, your body stiff as you prop yourself up on your knees, palms flat against the wood. You're sitting on a piece of what you assume was your ship, about three metres across and two in length, splintered around the edges. You don't have time to take in the fact this means you're officially fucked, like you hadn't been before, because something roils in your gut and you know that feeling too well. You manage to shift to the side of the platform, your last meal -fucking fish, you are so sick of fish- pouring out into the water, sweat beading on your face as the acidic mixture clouds and mixes with the water.

“You'd be surprised how much the fish like that.”

You freeze. Her voice is cool, crisp, delicately woven and the words cleanly bitten of. You move to sit up, facing where the voice came from. There's a girl there, half in the water as she crosses her dainty arms and leans on the edge of the platform, her neatly rounded chin resting in them as her bright violet eyes look up at you beneath her wet, short white hair, whiter than yours, whiter than any you've seen. She has defined cheekbones, a strong set jaw under her greyish skin, her lips, black as oil, set into a gentle smile.

“Am I dead?” is the first thing your mouth blurts out, simple and to the point. If you were thinking properly you'd have had more tact about it, but you can't help wanting to know.

“I'm afraid you're nothing of the sort, unless you have a different definition for _dead_. You did sleep pretty soundly.” You're transfixed by the way her mouth moves, her lips moving perfectly around the sounds and revealing teeth like white jewels.

A sigh crosses your lips as you realise you are getting the biggest fucking migraine. It is way too bright out here, and you wonder if your sunglasses are still in one piece wherever they are in this expanse of water. “Well that's a first. Who are you?”

She doesn't move for a moment, but then her smile widens the slightest, twitching the corners of her mouth. “Gl'flrnek,” she says, matter-of-fact. You blink. “The closest translation is 'rose'.”

“Alright, Rose.” You run the name over in your mind, and find it suits her perfectly, even if it's originally in gibberish. “I _should_ be dead right now, my ship is in pieces, my shades are gone, I'm stuck in the middle of the ocean, and I'm talking to a sea girl. Do I have all the facts straight here?”

“Add in that you're experiencing violent sea-sickness, and yes, you're spot on.”

“Fuckin' _perfect_ ,” you drawl, rubbing at your eyes. You've got to be going crazy, you must have a serious concussion or new levels of insanity -humanoid sea life was just a myth, right? Then again, scientists did claim that they'd only explored like ten-percent of the ocean or something. Maybe monkeys learned how to swim at some point in the evolution chain, who knows.

She just watches you, her purple eyes transfixed on yours like you're some interesting piece of art she's trying to find the emotional meaning behind. You wonder if she's ever seen a human before, and find that you frankly don't give a shit. “I didn't mean to ruin your boat. I was just upset.”

You laugh, a single, harsh bark. “Upset? You got _upset_ and some storm comes the fuck outta nowhere and almost kills me?”

She opens her mouth, looking like she's about to say something - _it's common knowledge, Dave, how could you not know?_ \- then closes it again, reconsidering. There's a moment of quiet before she speaks again. “Have you ever heard of the Horrorterrors of The Furthest Ring?”

Funnily enough, you have. You remember your friend Jade reading through some books in the college library, picking one up about horrorterrors, reading the first few pages aloud, then frowing and setting it aside claiming it was “just plain _nonsense_!”. “Yeah, kinda. I know they're like some freaky deep space monsters or something.”

She gives a small laugh, bubbly and gentle with a harsh undertone that isn't altogether nice. “Not quite. They exist in a realm beyond this one, untouchable by your kind, but they can touch you, so to speak. No, that's not entirely true. They can manifest in dreams of the finely tuned, but that's about it, so they employ emissaries to keep closer tabs on this world. I am one of these emissaries, and thus am endowed with some degree of power over my domain, which happens to be this ocean.”

“The entire ocean?”

“ _This_ ocean. You have seven oceans, which you've so neatly mapped out for us.”

“So there are seven of you? Your kind, I mean?” She nods, adjusting the bracelet around her wrist, a haphazard thing adorned with shells and sparkly rocks, picking a piece of seaweed out of it and setting it gently on the surface of the water.

“ _And the seven sirens lay tales across the waves, watching without eyes to wait for sailor's graves_ ,” she murmurs in a breezy tone, and something clicks in your head.

“It was you,” you say, sitting up a little straighter. “You were singing, before I passed out. Something about a moon and the sea and graves. You seem to like graves.”

She smiles, a real, genuine smile this time. “You like it? There's much more to the song, but I just picked a verse at random and went with it. I usually sing the more sentient creatures to sleep in their final moments; I find it comforts them.”

She takes a breath, her dark-rimmed eyes fluttering closed as her voice breaks through the air like a perfectly carved knife, transfixing you.

_Look down beneath the wave-worn bark_

_Into the cold depth of the sea!_

_Look down, look down!_

_Thus, on Life's lonely sea,_

_Heareth the marinere_

_Voices sad, from far and near,_

_Ever singing full of fear,_

_Ever singing dreadfully_.

It makes you shudder, the hairs standing up on the back of your neck. She opens her eyes again to look at you, smiling at your expression. “The lyrics are a little dark, but they like it.”

You like it. You can imagine yourself lying here, on your little plank of wood in the wide open sea, the sun comfortably warm on your bare skin as Rose sings quietly to you. You clear your throat, both to break the silence and try to get the gunk out of it. “I'm Dave, by the way.”

“I know,” she says, light-hearted. A lot of her dark shape is light, when you think about it. She seems to radiate it off the grey and white, the slight smell of oil covered by light and rain and the salty smell of the ocean. “I can take you home, if you like. Well, your home is far from here, but to inhabited land at least. It will take only a few hours.”

“Hours? Unless your distressed fit led me thousands of kilometres off course, we're days -weeks, even- from the nearest country.”

Her eyebrows -pale and thin and gently curved- arch up a little, her smirk suggestive. “Not for one borne of the sea and stars, Mr. Strider.”

“Are you trying to seduce me? I swear, if this turns into a real life play of _The Little Mermaid_ , I am gonna flip right into this ocean and become some fish creature. Maybe a dolphin.”

She rolls her eyes as she laughs again, all her movements performed with such precision you can't help being impressed even by such a simple act. “My dear, you are terribly misinformed. I am not a _mermaid_ , they're about as real as your dick is big.”

“Whoa now,” you scoff, holding your hands up in a kind of _now hold on a sec sweetheart_.

She smiles at you, moving to sit -stand? wade- upright in the water, her hands still set on the sodden edge of the wood. She bobs down a little, then hauls herself up, jumping out of the water and turning to sit on the edge of the platform, as graceful as the most practised dancer out there, flicking her drying hair out of her eyes. The snowy white strands are fluffy and her hair cut neatly when it's dry.

Your eyes move down to below her waist (the initial _oh God she's not wearing pants_ going through your mind before you realise that's stupid, there isn't even anything there) to what you couldn't see before, her skin smoothing out and becoming more slick and muscular around her abdomen, going from light grey to black, which you realise is actually a dark, dark purple, violet where the sun hits the surface just so. Instead of legs or a fish tail her body breaks off into separate, thick strands, thinning out at the points, and _holy shit those are tentacles_. They're similar to those of an octopus, the little rings for grasping shit, you forget what they're called, running down one side of each tentacle, the other side smooth like shark-skin. You notice the gill-slits down the sides of her stomach, closed in the open air, and realise they must be connected to the tiny incisions on her neck that you can only see when she moves her hair.

You regain your composure, still taking it all in. “Well, that's definitely not a mermaid,” you say stupidly, but she smiles. “Doesn't mean this isn't gonna go all Disney princess on me. Sing me a fuckin' song, Ariel, here's your fresh prince.”

“I'm impressed you even know her name. I think I've done quite enough singing for a lonely mariner.”

“Shame, I liked it when my ears bled.” She punches your arm gently, her hand cold where it touches your arm just under the cut-off of your t-shirt sleeve. You look at each other for a moment -it feels weird, sitting here like this, like you're long-acquainted friends out for a swim. She's really fucking with your head, and you really just want to sleep. Shower, then sleep. You got salt crusted in places salt shouldn't get. “Alright, well if you're willing to be kind enough, take me back, princess.”

She smiles, leaning toward you a little, an infinitesimal amount, then changes her mind. She stands up, shortened by her lack of legs enough that she'd stand somewhere between your stomach and your chest, going from defined figure to a black cloud where her tentacles are, and oh that's weird, you do not want to see those things when she _walks_ , but she spares you the nightmare. She gives you a wink, a flash of her bright purple eyes like amethysts, then leaps, rocking the platform as she propels herself off.

You scramble to the side, curiosity taking hold as you look over the edge into the blue murk, watching her silhouette as it glides through the water (she's clearly showing off, swimming in slight loops as she makes her way to the shorter side of the platform), disappearing for a moment before becoming visible again. She swims more elegantly than any fish you've seen, a mixture between a dolphin and an octopus as she propels herself through it like she's weightless. If it hand't been clear to you before, looking at her now you can see the ocean is very clearly her domain, her place.

She pops back up at the short side, resting her crossed arms on the edge like she'd done when you first saw her just moments ago. “Please keep your arms within the ride at all times,” she says, her dark lips smiling, “It may get a little bumpy.”

Then you're moving, no, you're _flying_ , gliding across the surface of the water like a bird on a wind current, Rose not even visibly moving as you jet across the water. You go to put your hand in, but she warns you that the force would snap your brittle human bones in an instant. You keep your limbs firmly on the wood.

It takes about three or four hours, you would guess, miles and miles of water passing you at high speed and barely even feeling it. You and Rose talk over the time it takes to get there, talk about everything and nothing and all things between, and you can't shake the feeling you've known her for ages. You fall into such a steady pattern of conversation, where she would listen to your long rambles and make precise quips between and you'd insult each other like old lovers, which is a weird comparison.

You do eventually reach land, visible on the horizon, and that's when she slows to a stop (she made emphasis on the _slow_. Apparently if she just stopped, you'd be thrown twenty feet through the air, before travelling another ten across the surface). She sighs, a deep, crystal-clear sigh that reminds you of little rivers trickling in quiet glades, but it's not a tired sigh. She doesn't even seem to have exerted any effort the whole trip, like the travel had just happened on its own without her input. It's more a disappointed sigh, solemn, hinted at with whispers of promises in other languages around the edges.

“I suppose this is where we part,” she says quietly, looking past you at the bay.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Silence passes, gulls calling out above you. You missed the abundance of birds, you realised. You don't get many on the open sea.

Her eyes move to yours, purple meeting red, things hidden in their depths you could never hope to understand. “Will you forget about me?”

At first you're not sure if it's an insecure question, or a request, can't tell if it's _will you come back?_ or _will you marry me?_ “No,” you say bluntly, no matter how the question was intended, “I don't think I will.”

She smiles, genuinely happy, and you know it was the right answer whether you were aiming for it or not. “Thank you,” she whispers, barely audible above the whisper of the water. Something changes in her face, though you can't pick what until she voices it. “You should come and visit me sometime.”

“Which ocean is this?” You should know, but you'd forgotten in the moment.

“North Atlantic. You're currently on the coast of Morocco.”

“Well shit, how do you feel about dropping by Texas sometime? I think I'm done with sailing for, like, ever.”

“I would love to, though it's a shame you're leaving behind your sea days. That means I actually have to come to the bay.”

“Well not entirely, I'll buy a boat and sail out like a mile for every date, just for you.”

“They're dates now?”

“Platonic dates?”

“That was a weak cover.” You don't have anything to say to that, so you just look at each other. Then you both laugh, a mixture of hers and yours that sounds like her music in your ears. You compose yourselves, looking at each other in an almost sullen air. “I've never done goodbyes before,” she murmurs quietly, looking away to pick at her nails -black, though you don't know if that's natural or painted.

“Well I've never been good at them,” you reply, more truthfully than you'd intended, “So how about we just throw that to the wind and see what happens?”

She gets her gentle smile back, but it's a little rueful. “You're a strange and funny guy, Dave. How are you for Saturday week?”

You smile then, a true and proper smile. “I think Saturday sounds ballin'. I'll bring popcorn and a movie.”

“Perfect. Now go, I'm sure you have much to do in a strange country you had no intention of ever visiting.” She makes a little 'oh!' shape with her mouth, holding up a finger for you to wait before she bobs under the water, returning half a minute later with items in her hand, which she lays on the platform in front of you. You look at them, and realise--

“Holy shit, you got my shades.” Your wallet, too, but credit cards can be replaced. Those shades were a gift from your best bro, virtually relics because of the famous faces they've been on, and now carry huge sentimental value you would never admit to.

“I felt you had a strong attachment to them,” she says, picking up your wallet and rifling through it, taking out your license. “David Strider,” she reads, “born twelve-three-ninety-six, Houston, Texas--”

“Alright, alright,” you mutter, taking it from her. “You're stalking me enough already.”

“Hardly.” There's another long pause, waiting as you plant your wet but safe glasses back on your face, God you missed them, and your wallet in the pocket of your salt-crusted jeans. She gestures you closer, so you scoot forwards, careful of tipping the wood as you lean forward for her. She cups your face with her cool, smooth hands, soft on your skin as she leans up, her breath ghosting across your lips in a moment of hesitation.

This close she smells like oil and blackness, but she tastes perfect, a taste of purple towers and water glistening in pastel colours on white sand and dark clouds rimmed with thorns and a world far gone that you can call home but are never able to reach and it just tastes so _Rose_. She pulls back, reluctance hanging between the breaths that are mixing in the small space between you.

She gives a breathy sort of laugh, a gentle chuckle hidden beneath it, and moves back completely. “Call me,” she whispers.

“How can I do that without a phone number?” you ask, raising an eyebrow for effect.

“Do you remember my name?”

Yes. You think you'd forgotten it before, but after that kiss you feel like every single thing since meeting her is crisp and clear in your mind and you're never going to forget it. “Let me guess, I gotta say it three times while dancing around a pagan circle painted in the blood of sacrificed virgins?”

She brushes a strand of hair away from your face. “Nothing so endearing as that. You just have to say it with enough _want_ in it. I'll hear you.” She bites her lip a little, then moves back up, kissing your forehead. “I expect a candle-lit dinner, dear,” she whispers against your hair, then pulls away, pushing you little raft of broken dreams toward to coast.

You're left to float toward the bay, her torso bobbing in the water becoming a silhouette as you drift further away, staring out across the empty ocean when she's too far away to see. You know she waits until your bare feet nestle in warm sand before she leaves.

You impatiently wait for your new phone to boot up, sitting at the over-priced airport café, nursing a half-decent coffee as you punch in the number and put it to your ear.

“Yo, Strider residence,” comes the voice, distorted by the connection.

“Hey bro, I need you come and pick me up from the airport. Well, I could get a taxi, but we both hate taxis and you're a much better driver.”

You notice the tiny little falter. “You're back in Houston?”

“Yep. Also, we're buying a boat.”

“Okay you have got to tell me exactly what the fuck you've ruined this time.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired to write this when I asked for prompts on tumblr, and my friend suggested tentarose and cabin-boy Dave. I'd never really humoured the idea of tentarose before but this was really fun to write!  
> The song that Rose sings is actually a poem I found called [The Sirens](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20876), which I though just fit really well.


End file.
